Portiuncula hospital €2.3m over budget after first half of 2009

A HSE report has found that Ballinasloe's Portiuncula Hospital exceeded its budget by €2.3 million during the first half of 2009. The figure was contained in the most recent report issued by the HSE's performance information system, HealthStat. It stated that the hospital went 9.7% over budget during the first six months of the year - spending €26.09 million instead of the budgeted figure of €23.78 million. In an effort to reduce costs, the hospital closed 35 beds at St John's Ward in recent months. The report noted that the overall level of activity at the hospital during that time period was approximately 5% more than had been projected in its service plan. The HealthStat report stated that the hospital's performance was inadequate in 12 of the 21 categories which were assessed. Among the problems identified in the June report were that five patients had been waiting for between 12 and 24 hours for acute admission from the emergency department. The HSE's target is that all such patients should be admitted in six hours or less. In addition all patients that are referred to hospital for routine outpatient physiotherapy should be seen within 70 days according to the HSE, but in Portiuncula this was taking over 200 days. The loss of staff hours at Portiuncula to absenteeism is another problem, according to the report. The hospital lost more than 6% of staff hours to absenteeism, breaching the HSE target of not losing more than 3.5%.